THE SABBATH AND TEMPERANCE.
By H. D. Clarke
The following article by H. D. Clarke, is taken from The New Era, the temperance organ of Otsego and Delaware counties, published at Cooperstown, N. Y. An occasional paper will open its columns for the presentation of truth for which let us "thank God and take courage." A few plain facts concerning the two great reforms of the age may not come amiss now while the people are on tip-toe of expectation. I refer to temperance reform and Sabbath reform. The latter comprehends more than most people are aware. That there is to be a grand fulfillment of prophecy concerning God's holy Sabbath seems to me to be apparent if I read aright the signs of the times. It is not my purpose in this article to speak at length of Sabbath reform in general or particular. I will simply say that the Christian world, with the exception of a few hundred thousand, have the Bible Sabbath under their feet, and are praising and petting a rival, man-made Sabbath. God says take your feet off his holy day. (Read Isaiah 58:13, Exodus 20:8-11, Revelation 14:12.) Concerning the late struggle in Newark, N. J., the Chicago Tribune says: "The clergy established a control over the Common Council after the election a year ago, and induced it to enact certain Sunday ordinances aimed at the suppression of the Sunday newspapers, running horse cars on Sunday, keeping open butcher shops and drug stores, as well as beer saloons, and concert gardens. The enforcement failed to promote vital piety or increase the attendance at church, which was the original clerical purpose of the compulsory Sunday ordinances." What does this and similar instances show? Simply this: that the effort of a large class is not so much to abolish the liquor traffic as to enforce the observance of a man-made Sabbath. Again, the second resolution of our Prohibition State Platform is a bid for the enforcement of the Sunday laws. While I am a Prohibitionist, and believe it the duty of every Christian to always vote as he prays, and seek by every honorable means to crush out the hell-born traffic, I protest against any attempt to hinge on the laws which are in direct conflict with the immutable law of God, or of any State law compelling men to observe religious ordinances. Hypocrites are too numerous already without the State manufacturing them. Why suppress the liquor traffic on Sunday any more than on Wednesday? Is it sin to do common labor on the first day of the week? Yes, says some reader. Well, my friend, will you tell me what sin is? You reply that the Bible says, "Sin is the transgression of the law." What law? The law of God as found in Sacred Writ. Very well, will you find the law forbidding work on the first day? No such law is found in the Bible, but I do find in the law which Christ says he "came not to destroy," in that law that Paul calls "holy, just, and good," "that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, in it thou shalt not do any work." Did God mean it? And will he hold the man guiltless that willfully disregards it? But I do not ask the State to enforce its observance, neither have my temperance friends authority to compel me to penal laws to observe the first day of the week, when God commands you and me to work on it. I challenge any Bible student to find in the sacred Scriptures any authority for keeping holy the Sunday, either by a divine law or by any apostolic example. No such instance is therein found. 'Tis true that religious teachers have interpreted their ideas of such a thing into three or four texts, but it is not there, and the most reliable church historians have failed to give us any evidence of Sunday-keeping by Christians until many scores of years after Christ's ascension. Then Gentile Christians hated Jews to such an extent that they came to hate God's Sabbath, and down through the ages this rival Sabbath has become generally observed (only as a holiday) as a result of imperial decrees and ecclesiastical councils that have fulfilled the prophecy of Daniel 7:25. Neander, the great church historian, says: "The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was only a human ordinance." I humbly pray my temperance friends to be consistent if they would march out boldly to meet the rum elements, and especially if they would have God's approval. But when you use the blessed temperance cause to break down the Papal Sunday which is unscriptural, then defect will be plainly marked on our banners. — Sabbath Recorder.